


The Blood of Longing

by Dienda



Category: The Terror (TV 2018)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Artistic License: Road Safety, Car Accidents, Don't let the Pigeon (Sir John) Drive the Bus, Fluff, Light Angst, Love Confessions, M/M, Mentioned Medical Procedures
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-31
Updated: 2020-10-31
Packaged: 2021-03-09 00:16:13
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,860
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27315391
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Dienda/pseuds/Dienda
Summary: James woke up in a hospital bed. He remembered the throbbing pain getting sharper and sharper until it felt like an iron claw clenched around his entire chest. A pain so intense he couldn’t even draw breath. He remembered Francis touching his throat with something like panic in his sky-blue eyes.
Relationships: Captain Francis Crozier/Commander James Fitzjames
Comments: 16
Kudos: 68





	The Blood of Longing

James woke up in a hospital bed. It was dark. But, it had been not quite dusk just a moment ago. They’d been waiting to hear the wails of the ambulance sirens; Francis had been keeping James still as he tried to peek through the broken windows of the van and now— now James examined the different shades of indigo around him, trying to make sense of them even as his thoughts tumbled clumsily inside his head. The one thing we could tell was that it wasn’t a room but a ward, judging by the symphony of beeping and the low murmur of machines thrumming unseen behind the curtain drawn around his bed.

Maybe the rest of them were in the other beds. Mr. Franklin and Tom Blanky and Dundy and Fra— no, Francis wasn’t hurt. Only he was, there’d been blood on his face. But he’d said it was nothing, that James should stop fretting and just hold still or he’d— right, his ribs were broken. James remembered the throbbing pain getting sharper and sharper until it felt like an iron claw clenched around his entire chest. A pain so intense he couldn’t even draw breath. He remembered Francis touching his throat with something like panic in his sky-blue eyes. But the pain was gone now, there was only a dull, almost distant pressure on the side of his chest; James tried to turn his head to look down at it but his neck would simply not obey.

It didn’t matter though, they were all safe now, he was sure of it. Francis would’ve made sure they were all safe. 

The curtain shifted and parted to reveal a nurse holding a clipboard and a stethoscope. James tried to focus on her but could only make out a pair of large dark eyes above a surgical mask. She came close to press the stethoscope to his chest and check the displays on the machine beeping next to him.

“We’re rescued,” he mumbled with a sloppy smile, voice gravelly and a bit slurred, but the nurse’s eyes crinkled with amusement above the mask.

“You are,” she said in a pleasant Scottish burr, “but don’t try to speak now. Go back to sleep.”

As if her words were an order or a spell, James felt his eyelids getting heavier and heavier until he could no longer fight the pull of slumber.

*

James was moving. His body could feel the motion even when the heaviness in his limbs told him they still had him on the good drugs. He could hear the faint squeak of wheels somewhere beneath him and the murmur of voices drawing closer only to be left behind again.

He blinked his eyes open, just long enough to see the white hospital ceiling crawling by as a nurse pushed him down a nondescript corridor. He wondered where they were taking him but the thought dissolved as his gurney turned to another seemingly endless hallway and his eyelids slid shut again.

*

He was in a private room now. It was still dark but the night behind the window was starting to grow pale, the approaching sunrise painting the bare hospital walls a mild, sickly mauve. James felt like he’d been unconscious for ages, one interminable night, though his limbs still felt leaden and useless. But now the fatigue had less to do with whatever sedation they were giving him and was more a result of the sheer exhaustion from the quite literal beating his body had taken. The inside of his chest felt sore and there was a dim yet insistent point of pain on his left side, almost at his armpit. He barely had enough energy to drag his half-lidded eyes over the faceless walls, until they landed on the figure at the other side of the room.

There, standing next to the door, was Francis. He was staring at James with a deep scowl, his brows furrowed tightly and his mouth pressed in a thin line. His eyes had gone grey in the half light. He looked angry. He looked devastated. He had his left arm tucked against his chest, like it hurt. There was a flutter of butterfly bandages around his nose and on his temple. James remembered, again, the blood on his face, the roughness in his voice when he’d told him to stay still. You’re a sight for sore eyes, he wanted to say, lightly and with a wry smile, but his mouth didn’t move to articulate the words. He wanted to ask Francis if he was alright, if the others were, if he would come closer so James could perhaps reach his hand out and—

Before he could get his voice to work, the door opened and a nurse marched in. She startled when she noticed Francis standing by the door. “Sir, you can’t—”

Francis straightened and nodded, looking at her as if she’d woken him from slumber, his frown transformed into an embarrassed expression as he shuffled to leave the room. “Yes, I’m sorry. I’ll just— right.”

He disappeared down the hall. James kept staring at the door, even when the nurse stepped close to check his IV line and prod with gentle fingers at the dull pain in his chest.

*

James still wasn’t sure what time it was. The pale, sickly dawn had resolved itself into a rainy, miserable morning. At least his limbs were obeying him now; he could move his arms and legs, though trying to shift on the bed made the pain flare like a matchstick catching on fire. A clumsy, sluggish exploration with his right hand had revealed a patch of bandages and what felt like a tube coming out of his side, where the ache was sharper.

They hadn’t brought him any breakfast but he wasn’t hungry. He wasn’t anything but tired and in pain. No, he was worried too, about the others. He kept thinking about Mr. Franklin’s gasps of pain, how he’d cried —a sharp, animal sound— when Francis and Edward had finally managed to cut his seatbelt and lower him to the roof of the van. James had tried to comfort him with reassurances that they would be alright, before his own breath had become laboured and what he’d thought was the adrenaline from the accident turned into careering tachycardia. Mr. Franklin’s leg had been in a bad way, smashed against the twisted metal of the driver’s door and covered in what looked like too much blood.

There was a brisk knock on the door before it swung open. James’ heart gave a painful leap before sagging in disappointment. He’d hoped Francis would come back. Instead, two men walked into the small room; one had the knackered expression and rumpled scrubs of an on call physician, the other was tall and stern-faced, clad in perfectly ironed street clothes.

“Mister Fitzjames,” said the younger man with an uncertain smile. “I’m doctor Goodsir.”

“Wonderful to meet you, doctor,” James smiled at him as widely as he could manage. He recognised the other man. “Doctor Stanley.”

“Mister Fitzjames,” the doctor said with a curt nod. Stephen Stanley was a retired navy surgeon and John Franklin’s personal physician. If he was here it meant Mrs. Franklin was also around as well. The thought gave James both a rush of relief and a pang of dread. How was he going to explain to her—

“Mr. Franklin, is he alright?” he hurried to ask. “There was so much blood.”

“Mr. Franklin’s condition is stable,” answered doctor Stanley, clearly unwilling to elaborate on the subject. Instead, he gestured at James’ chest. “Has anyone deigned to give you a full report of your medical condition?” 

James saw doctor Goodsir’s eyes widen and his cheeks darken as he started stammering about James’s sedation. Doctor Stanley’s bedside manner left a lot to be desired but he was as competent as he was cold. James smiled again. “I’ve only been awake long enough to remember why I’m not at home in the first place.”

“You do remember the crash?”

“Yes,” James said. He remembered the squeal of tyres and the sharp, sudden tilt as the van slid off the road. Their screams. The roar of metal and plastic twisting and smashing again and again. Seeing the world spin into a pinwheel of broken glass and terror. Then an endless second of upside-down silence before they all started scrabbling to reassure themselves they were still alive. “Perfectly.”

“Were you aware of your injuries at the time?” Doctor Stanley was looking down at the clipboard of his file while Doctor Goodsir looked like an anxious student waiting for a final grade.  
“I take it it’s not just a couple of broken ribs,” James ventured.

“Indeed,” Dr Stanley deadpanned before reciting James’s injuries. “Your sixth and seventh ribs do have minor fractures, but the force of the impact was strong enough to create a tension pneumothorax.” 

Doctor Goodsir must’ve caught James’s blank stare for he hurried to explain, “your lung collapsed.” 

Well, that sounded serious. No wonder he’d conked out on Francis. It also explained why his entire chest had felt like it was on fire.

Doctor Stanley cleared his throat at the interruption and went on with a side glance at the other doctor. “Yes, air collected in your pleural space. It was significant enough to provoke cardiopulmonary arrest.”

“Blimey,” James murmured. Dr Stanley seemed pleased with such a mild reaction to this information but the truth was, James was struggling to wrap his still muddled brain around the whole barrage of medical jargon.

“Fortunately for you, the paramedics arrived just on the nick of time,” the doctor went on, barely peeling his eyes away from the clipboard. “Needle decompression was applied to restore your cardiac output. It lasted less than two minutes, but cognitive tests will be performed to discard any sort of brain damage.” This last said with a pointed look at the younger physician.

“Of course,” Dr Goodsir nodded. He hesitated for a second before turning back to James and adding, “though you should thank your friend, he’s the one who told the paramedics your trachea had deviated. That’s— that’s how they knew your lung had collapsed, otherwise they wouldn’t have known to attempt decompression.”

James nodded feebly. Again, Francis’s fingertips on his throat, that lost, helpless look making his eyes bluer than the sky itself.

“Anyway,” Stanley muttered, “the pneumologist replaced the cannula with an intercostal catheter.” He finally stepped close enough to scowl at James’s wound. “Flutter valve?”

“The pneumologist thought it was the best option.”

He gave an unimpressed hum but didn’t contradict doctor Goodsir. “Well, the catheter will stay in place for a couple of days and the ribs should heal on their own, avoid strenuous activity but otherwise try to carry on as usual.”

“Right,” James whispered, attempting to give the man a grateful smile. He’d be alright, that was the important bit, wasn’t it?

“Oh, and” added doctor Stanley, gesturing at James’s left eye, “the subconjunctival haemorrhage should also heal on its own within a fortnight.” 

James’s hand shot up to his cheekbone, his chest protesting the abrupt movement with a jolt of pain. His eye felt suddenly sore. “Haemorrhage?”

“Just apply artificial tears if the irritation bothers you too much.” Then he gave James what was surely supposed to be a reassuring smile. “You’re on the mend, Mr. Fitzjames.” 

Then Dr Stanley thrust the clipboard into Dr Goodsir’s hands and left the room without a second glance.

*

When it arrived, his breakfast consisted of tepid tea, orange juice, yogurt and the saddest porridge James had ever encountered. Still, once he had the tray in front of him, he realised he was actually famished. He guessed it was a good sign.

Doctor Goodsir had lingered a bit longer to give James a more thorough check-up and put him through the battery of cognitive and motor skills tests doctor Stanley had promised. The younger doctor proved to be no less competent than Stanley, only almost painfully shy and self-conscious, so James had tried to be as amenable as possible. Then a nursed had come around to help him get up to use the loo and put an icepack on his ribs and show him how to do the breathing exercises to avoid pneumonia; she’d promised him he’d be able to shower later in the afternoon and reminded him both doctors had ordered he take at least one short walk down the hall. Then his sorry breakfast had arrived.

He’d just finished drinking his juice when there was a shuffling noise behind the door and a wheelchair pushed inside, its occupant swearing softly as he had to twist to close the door behind him. 

“Dundy,” James gasped, with equal relief and distress; his friend’s right foot was enfolded in a clunky orthopaedic boot but he looked perfectly healthy otherwise.

“Two broken toes and a sprained ankle,” Dundy said with what sounded like pride. He wheeled himself to James’s bedside and handed him one of the two packets of crisps he had on his lap. James snorted at his friend but took the proffered bag. “I am pleased as Punch. I’m not the one with a tube coming out of his chest,” Dundy added before growing a bit more serious. “You look a fright, Jas. Are you alright? How are you feeling?”

“Like I’ve got a tube coming out of my chest.” James said with a wry smile, then he tried to let out a dramatic sigh that ended in a flinch. He sagged against the pillows and tugged the crisps open. “Like a hamster in a ball who got kicked down a flight of stairs.”

Dundy’s laughter rang out against the faceless walls. “God, if that doesn’t describe it perfectly. Only there were other nine screaming hamsters in the ball as well.” 

James wrapped his arms around himself to control his laughter. “Bloody hell, Dundy, don’t make me laugh.”

“You’re the one who said it,” Dundy protested in between giggles. “Well, at least we made it out alive, even before the crash.”

James groaned. It had been a truly horrid trip from the start. When Mr. Franklin had suggested a camping trip as a team building exercise for all the executives, James had actually been a bit excited. Francis, of course, had declared it a load of bollocks taken straight out of an American coaching magazine —which wasn’t too far off— and had tried, in vain, to dissuade Mr. Franklin from the idea. So they’d taken one of the company’s personnel vans and set out for the far end of Gloucestershire for a long weekend. 

It had gone poorly right away. First, they’d missed their junction and ended up driving in the wrong direction for over twenty minutes, then a flat tyre almost as soon as they got on the M25. Later, upon arriving on the Wye Valley, they’d discovered their camping site was not so much a camping site as a neglected country estate owned by one of Mr. Franklin’s friends; which would’ve been alright except it had started pissing down rain before they could even set up the tents. At this point Francis had suggested driving to the nearest village and checking into a B&B but Mr. Franklin had directed them to the estate’s dilapidated hunting cabin, which was barely drier than being out in the rain. Still, they’d spent the night, crammed into their sleeping bags and huddled together for warmth. The last straw had come the following evening, when they’d discovered the rest of catered food Mr. Franklin had bought smelled more than a bit off. The cabin’s pantry had only yielded a couple of bloated cans. It was still pouring so they’d eaten whatever snacks they’d brought along and decided to just head back home first thing in the morning.

“Doctor Stanley’s here, I tried to ask him about Mr. Franklin but he wouldn’t tell me anything,” James said, hoping his friend knew something about their boss’s condition.

“I don’t know the particulars, but it’s bad,” Dundy’s smile had withered. “Not life-threatening bad but he’ll need a few surgeries, think they were considering amputating the leg.”

James’s stomach dropped. “Jesus Christ, are you serious?”

Dundy nodded sombrely. “Tom Blanky’s leg is a mess too. Broken in three different places, they had to put some nails in it.”

“Fuck. How—” James felt the corners of his eyes prickling. “The rest of them?”

“Bumps and scratches mostly, sore necks all around. Irving got cut quite badly, the camping lantern pretty much exploded on him, but it’s all superficial. Crozier’s broken hand’s not so bad, he says.” That startled James, Francis hadn’t said anything about— then he remembered the way Francis had been cradling his arm earlier that morning. Before he could say anything about it, Dundy asked, “Jas, what the hell happened? One moment I was trying to get George to shut up about the history of Canasta and the next we were going arse over tits down the hill."

“It’s so stupid I hope one day we’ll be able to laugh at it,” James shook his head and wished he could raise both arms to rub hard at his eyes like a tired child. He scoffed. “A polar bear.”

James and Francis had taken turns driving, on the way there. As they piled into the van to head back home, Mr. Franklin had offered, rather enthusiastically, to drive, at least until they reached the main motorway. They all knew their boss had probably never driven anything bigger than his slick sedan —which he didn’t drive that often in the first place— so Francis had politely declined, saying there was no need, but James, fool that he was, had thought Mr. Franklin just wanted to make up to them for the food and handed him the keys with his most reassuring smile.

They’d been going through a winding road up a wooded hill. James had taken the front passenger seat, Francis tense in the seat behind him, ignoring Tom’s attempts to draw him into a conversation. They’d been about to take a sharp turn when, speeding down the opposite lane, appeared an ancient, beaten up Mini with a gigantic polar bear tied to its roof. Now, as he recalled a moment that couldn’t have lasted more than three seconds, James was amazed at the details his memory showed him. The gargantuan bear was ugly and misshapen and made of what looked like papier mâché, it was so big it almost looked bigger than the car. Inside the Mini, a sullen-looking man in a red jacket was hunched over the wheel, a ginger, rat-faced man sitting beside him and, peering from the back seat, a gaunt face with a mop of curly blond hair. Just as they were about to cross paths, the ginger bloke stretched out his arm and honked the horn at them. The whole thing must’ve startled Mr. Franklin for he swerved sharply to the left but, being unfamiliar with the van’s weight and low stability, he'd swerved too widely and the tyres skidded off the road and the van tilted to the side before he could do anything about it. 

They’d crashed against the barrier and tumbled almost halfway down the hill before they hit a tree sturdy enough to stop them. Once they’d fumbled out of their seatbelts and made a quick assessment of everyone’s injuries, James and Francis sent Graham and Walter to try and find help up on the road and maybe get enough signal to call 999. 

It really seemed like a miracle that they were all alive.

“Jesus,” breathed Dundy once James finished telling him the whole sorry thing. “It does sound like something out of a bad comic strip.”

Then, as they munched on their crisps, Dundy told him Francis had called his brother and Will had promised to come as soon as possible; James was loath to bother his brother, especially when the doctor had said he’d be perfectly alright. Between work and having a toddler and a new baby at home Will couldn’t afford to spend two days in Gloucestershire waiting for James to be released from hospital. He made Dundy promise he’d call him to tell him there was no need to hurry, or to come at all, really. 

“Has he come around to see you?” Dundy asked at length, in a carefully casual tone. No need to ask who, Dundy was well aware of James’s hopeless crush.

James thought of that image of Francis by the door, pale and quiet in the early morning light. “He came earlier but the nurse kicked him out before we could say even a single word.”

“Hmm, I’m sure he’ll be back as soon as he has a spare moment,” said Dundy, “he’s been fixing this whole mess, really. Wrangling with the insurance and calling everyone’s emergency contacts, you know how he is.”

“Yes.” James couldn’t help the fond smile that curved his lips. Knowing Francis, he’d already arranged hotel rooms and rides and three square meals for everyone involved.

“You gave him a proper fright, Jas,” murmured Dundy with a scowl. “When they took you away he looked— I tried to convince him to ride in the ambulance with you but he insisted on staying until everyone was out of the van and packed into the ambulances.”

The pain in James’s chest tightened.

*

He opened his eyes at the soft click of the door opening. He hadn’t realised he’d been dozing. The nurse had come and gone, with more tea and a fresh dose of painkillers. As the pain dulled, he’d tried to fight the new wave of drowsiness taking hold of him. He’d obviously failed. 

Now he blinked away the last traces of sleep and focused on the person who’d entered his room. It was Francis. James gave him a lazy, unguarded smile, feeling a surge of contentment just at the sight of him. He still looked pale and worn but now he was wearing clean clothes, he’d obviously had chance to shower at some point. Yes, his left hand was in a cast. And the cut on his nose was blooming into twin bruises under his eyes. He didn’t say a word as he came in and just stared, stricken, at the bandages on James’s chest.

“It looks worse than it is,” James said with a wry grin. Dundy had lent him his mobile before leaving; he knew he looked a downright ghoulish, ashen and bruised and wild-haired, one eye drowned in blood and tubes coming out of him.

Francis remained silent.

James was about to make another joke when, suddenly, the words curdled in his mouth. There was something off about Francis; despite the clean clothes he looked dishevelled and unfocused, his eyes were rimmed red and he was staring at James as if he’d never seen him before, almost as if looking through him. In a way, Francis looked as he used to look before, when—

James and Francis had clashed, from the first day, back when James had been more a glossy veneer than a man and Francis’s high-functioning alcoholism had been sliding into a complete mess. But even back then there’d been a different tension between them, a magnetic pull that made James think one day they were going to scream at each other so loud they’d end up fucking. But it hadn’t happened. Francis had gone away to sober up and when he came back he’d been himself but also someone new. Someone still mulish and blunt and infuriatingly shrewd, but also kind and steadfast and surprisingly, delightfully, bashful. And so James had gone from an annoying attraction to being hopelessly besotted. 

Seeing that lost, distraught expression on Francis’s face now made him feel a pang of white-hot panic. What if the accident, seeing Mr. Franklin seriously hurt had pushed Francis to drink again?  
“You didn’t tell me you were hurt,” he said cautiously, fearing that, when he replied, Francis’s voice would be slurred.

Francis blinked at the question and then he looked down at his injured hand as if he’d forgotten about it. “It didn’t hurt too bad, then, and I—” He looked back at James and gestured at his chest. “You were in pain—” His words were soft but perfectly clear. James felt a wave of relief. 

“Sorry I passed out on you,” he said, wrinkling his nose with a rueful smile. Dundy had been right, he’d worried Francis.

But Francis looked at him as if he’d said something outrageous and, suddenly, his blue eyes welled up with tears. He looked down to blink them back and James saw him take a deep, shaky breath.

“Francis?” James asked, helplessly. He felt his own throat tightening. “I shouldn’t have let him drive. The whole thing’s my fault.”

“It’s not. It’s not even his fault,” Francis shook his head, wiping at his eyes with his uninjured hand. “It’s— I heard the ambulance so I tried to peer through the windscreen or the window, until I finally saw the lights flashing,” his voice was tight and rough, barely above a whisper. “When I looked down at you again I— you weren’t breathing.” He looked back at James, something pleading and brittle in his eyes. “You weren’t— I tried to find your pulse, to find your heartbeat but I couldn’t.”

Abruptly, like a bucket of ice cold water, Dr Stanley’s barrage of medical words made sense. Cardiopulmonary arrest. He had stopped breathing. His heart had stopped. James took a second to wrap his brain around it. It had never occurred to him, for even one second, that he was hurt that badly. Not even when the pain got worse and worse. If anything, he’d felt agonisingly alive.   
“Then they reached us and they took you away and I didn’t know if—” Francis’s voice splintered in his throat. He swallowed his tears and tried again “I didn’t know if you were d—”

Francis had thought James had died in his arms. And James had, in the most technical way. He hadn’t had any sort of liminal experience or seen any distant light. He’d just passed out in the van and then woken up in a hospital bed. He reached his hand out over the wrinkled covers. “Francis, I’m so sorry.”

“Don’t be silly,” Francis shook his head with a scoff. Silence stretched between them, punctured by the mechanical beeping that betrayed James’s heartbeat. 

“I’m alright,” James reassured him, “I swear. I’ll go back to pinching your chips in no time at all.”  
Francis gave him an impossibly fond smile before stepping closer to the bed, blue eyes focused on James’s outstretched hand. He cleared his throat and said “James, I need to tell you something.”

“Yes?” he asked with a lighter, almost teasing tone. He was prepared for some kind of scolding, Francis telling him never to scare him like that again, to make an acerbic remark about their ill-fated trip.

Instead, Francis took a deep breath, as if to steel himself, and said “I am in love with you.” He looked up at James, hesitant. “For a while now.”

“Francis,” he heard himself gasp, stunned and wrong-footed and breathlessly happy. His chest gave a jolt of jubilant pain.

“You don’t need to say—” Francis shook his head almost frantically. “I’m not asking anything, It’s just—” He scowled, eyes going sightless again. “I kept thinking, I never told him. What if he— and I never told him and now this thing is going to rot inside me, unsaid. Because I was a coward and didn’t have the—”

“Francis, stop,” James pleaded before Francis could keep tormenting himself. Francis reeled back at his words but James caught his hand before he could step back. “I do need to say something,” the beeping from the machine had grown almost frantic. “Because I feel exactly the same.” He squeezed Francis’s hand. “For a while now.”

“James,” Francis’s voice was a stunned, wide-eyed murmur.

James pulled him closer. “Please, would you just—”

Francis pressed their lips together in a searing kiss. An almost pornographic moan escaped James’s throat, startling a huff of laughter out of both of them. James flinched at the stab of pain it provoked but Francis wrapped his hand, broad and warm, around the curve of his side, over the bruises, and James felt a rush of desire so strong he almost growled as he tried to control his breathing. He pressed their foreheads together. “Francis, you need to take me to bed the moment I get out of here.”

“Only thing you’ll be doing in bed for a while is sleeping,” Francis said with a happy, dazzled smile.

“Then sleep next to me,” James sighed. Christ, but he wanted to wrap his arms around Francis, to climb into his lap and hold him, give him a kiss that would leave them both panting. “I’ll take anything I can, Francis. I adore you.”

Francis’s second kiss pinned him back against the pillow, his fluttering heart cradled into the gentle, safe heat of his hand.

**Author's Note:**

> Written because I wanted to have my cake and eat it too in that I wanted some of the angst of James dying without James actually dying. Also, someone once mentioned on Tumblr the idea of James's scar being something surgical and I have kind of an obsession with pneumothorax so, here we are.
> 
> Fun fact: Being tall and slender puts you at risk of getting pneumothorax just, like, out of the blue, no injury or pre-existing condition needed. And nobody is sure why. Another fun fact: if you get pneumothorax once it's quite likely you'll get it again, just, whenever.
> 
> Also, I know you can't drive a passenger van with a normal driving licence but let us pretend.
> 
> Also, also, this isn't my first Terror fic but it's the first I publish so, yay!


End file.
